When it comes to web strategies, few experts talk about the needs of a small, local-focused, brick and mortar store and how they should be approaching the Internet to increase their visibility and success. Instead, their advice and recommendations are more suited to businesses that can operate anywhere, sell to anywhere, and are targeted to the entire web instead of just a local market. When they do give advice for a small local market, the advice often consists of two directions: Facebook/Twitter and Search Engine Optimization.*

Because of this, we believe that most small, local businesses are getting poor advice and wasting their time, money, and effort.

Instead we propose undertaking efforts that the small business themselves can manage while creating long-term growth in their online presence and employing a capture strategy meant to bring clients and customers through their doors.

Get locally listed for location-related searches

Search engines are getting better and better at local searches, meaning that they will either know your location and use that as a factor in the results they return, or the user will have entered their location into the search query.

Getting listed in directories used to be a time consuming and frustrating experience (in fact getting listed in dmoz still is). However, it is now possible to easily, and fairly quickly, get listed in the directory that will drive the most traffic to your site: Google Local Search (more later).

As a local business, you can not ignore mobile search. This isn't to say that you need to have a mobile-friendly, mobile-version, or a responsive website, but simply that you need to have put thought into how you are targeting and making yourself accessible to visitors using a mobile device.

The growth in mobile search, and the high percentage and immediate goal conversions that occur from those searches, means that if you can put yourself in front of those mobile searches, and have a site that enables them to immediately fulfill their information goals, then a customer could be walking through your door within the hour.

What would a mobile-searcher be looking for if they landed at your site? Identify that information and make sure it is easily accessible to user on a mobile device. Curious to know the percentage of people visiting your site from mobile devices? If you've installed Google Analytics you'd be able to see your traffic by device type along with lots of other very useful information. And if a website redesign isn't in your budget for fixing mobile display issues in your site, there are a number of services that can provide an add-on mobile site for a small monthly subscription.

Email marketing is still relevant

Yes, email marketing and newsletters are still a great way to keep in contact with your fans. There will be social media "experts" that will push Facebook, but we don't agree with that position. Put more simply, and looking specifically at Facebook, in order to get a high percentage of people to see your post, you need to "boost" it and pay for that privilege. With email marketing you can pay a monthly subscription based on the size of your list, or pay per address on one-off emails. That doesn't mean you can't post to Facebook in addition to an email, but that you might not feel the need to boost your post.

In terms of simplicity, most providers give you a code snippet that is easy to incorporate into your website for collecting email addresses, and the management tools that they provide are simple to use and allow very targeted lists to be generated.

All of these tips can be done by you
There aren't any secrets here; all of these tips that we've provided in this strategy can be implemented by you, easily and cost-effectively. So why did we provide them? Because when you need to take your presence and strategy to the next level, you should call us.